Skiing, like most outdoor activities in the winter, is great exercise and a lot of fun — that is if nothing goes wrong. The most common skiing injury used to be leg fractures, but now that releasable bindings are prominent, those injuries have dropped by 90%. Instead, the most common problem today is knee injuries. The most common is the medial collateral ligament (MCL) tear and the second most common is the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear.

While the latter often requires surgery, in some cases it doesn’t, and the MCL tear usually does not. If you experience pain after skiing, a sports medicine rehabilitation professional can aid you in determining the cause and the severity, and get you on the road to recovery.

There are some things you can do to prevent knee injuries when skiing. If you properly condition your body, use the right equipment, learn the correct skiing techniques, and get proper rest before hitting the slopes, you stand a far lower risk of ending up with knee injuries. You can condition your body through aerobic training and developing strength in your core and legs. Squats (single and double leg), side-to-side skaters, and side plank exercises will do wonders at getting you ready for the slopes.

While on the slopes, take care to balance your weight when you are in the snow plow position, don’t take on harder terrain than you are accustomed to, and be sure you land a jump properly. A lot of knee injuries happen when going off the marked trails as well.

Should you not heed this advice, or knee injuries befall you anyway, at Sprains & Strains, we can help. We’ll diagnose knee injuries to determine if it is a sprain or something worse and then develop a plan for healing. Feel free to call us with any questions you may have about knee injuries.